Petrichor

Your word for the week is petrichor.  It means the smell of rain on dry soil.  The refreshing petrichor of summer brought a coolness to a hot and sticky Pensacola.  I don’t know how you would ever have occasion to use that sentence, but now you can.

It was the “word of the day” at the gas station this week while I was filling up.  I like to play a little game with myself when I see the “word of the day” coming — whether it will be a word I actually use, whether I know it enough to be vaguely acquainted with its usage, etc.  I flatter myself that I have a relatively sizeable lexicon.  But I’ll admit, I had never even seen that word.  And then by the time I got to the office, I had forgotten it.  Thankfully I was able to track it down; otherwise I would not have an article for this space this week.

You know by now, I am all about learning new things.  “Wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness” (Ecclesiastes 2:13).  But, as Solomon learned all too well, knowledge for its own sake is as vain as the various pleasures of the flesh.  The blessings God gives us must be used in a productive way, or else we might as well not be given them at all.

Unless I feel the pressing urge to sound snooty, I likely will go the next six months without referring to petrichor.  And that knowledge will leave me, perhaps forever.  I would hate for that to happen to the insights I gain from reading the Bible this year — particularly the parts I don’t read very often on my own.  If I read with a view to application, though, perhaps it will bring a fresh petrichor to my walk with Christ.

(Was that forced?  It felt forced.)